London Calling
by Blue Zombie
Summary: Ashley contemplates leaving Craig.
1. Chapter 1

Alone in my room where I did my best thinking. Music playing, jagged little songs by Godsmack. "Whatever" was starting to sound like my theme song. 'I did the best I can, I did the best I ever did, go away,'.

One of us had to go away. It was Craig. I thought I could hack it. I thought I could handle this bipolar illness but it seemed to be getting worse. Not Craig but me. I was less and less able to deal with it, and the cold hearted part of me was starting to wonder why I had to.

"Ashley!" My mom, and I could tell by the slight irritation in her tone that Craig was here. She hadn't liked him at all when he cheated on me last year, and what with how he acted at my dad's wedding she liked him even less.

"Hi," I said, coming down the stairs. Craig stood in the hall, looking a little affected by my mom's dislike. She tried to be nice to him but she never really hid how she felt.

"Hi," he said, brightening up when he saw me. He put something in his hair or blow dried it in an attempt to get rid of his curls, so it only curled behind his ears and at his collar. I thought he looked good either way. I kind of liked all the curls.

"Joey let you borrow his car?" I said when we were outside and I saw the red convertible sitting in the driveway.

"Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Yeah,"

We sped along to the party that Paige's brother Dylan was having. Everyone would be there, except probably Spinner. But I wasn't sure we were being fair to Spinner. It isn't like he knew Rick would start shooting people. If he had known that blaming Jimmy for that stunt would get him nearly killed, shot and paralyzed, he never would have said it. Most of us are that way, I think. If you could know just how harmful your actions will be you'd never do it.

I looked at Craig, the way he drove with one hand, the way his bangs hung straight down over his forehead. He'd been mean to Spinner, and I didn't think that was like him. And I was starting to split things with Craig, thinking of how he was before and how he is now, after being in the hospital, after embarrasing me and himself at the wedding, after destroying the hotel room, after beating up Joey.

"Hey, Ash, are you okay?" he said after he'd parked the car. I did love him, of course I did. Part of me wished we could go back to ninth grade, when Jimmy was trying to shove me into this little box of someone I couldn't be, and Craig understood that. He got me. I remembered practicing for that Shakespeare skit with him and he said, "If you really love someone you wouldn't want to change them. You'd love them for who they are,"

"Ash?" All the concern filling his dark hazel eyes, only slightly glazed by the medication he had to take.

"What? Yeah, I'm fine,"

I heard the music throbbing before we even got in the door. Craig walked slightly ahead, a slight smile on his face. I wondered what was real with him now. What was real and what was medication.

"Hi, Hon!" Paige shouting to Craig, hugging him. He let himself be hugged, patted her back and pulled away as soon as he could. I'd noticed this with him, his aversion to being touched.

"Honey!" Shouting at me, throwing her arms around me. I hugged her, closed my eyes. Paige and me, we used to be best friends but all that stuff that went on at my party in eighth grade ruined it. We were friends again, we were fine now, but it's kind of like the vase that breaks and is glued back together. It looks the same but you can never put as much water in it.


	2. Chapter 2

Paige was quite a host, I watched her making the rounds like some 30 year old hosting some backyard barbeque. Saw Jimmy in his chair in a corner, the sad look on his face when he thought no one was looking, and then the brave smile when he thought they were. Dylan, his small eyed smile, his attention on Marco. Spinner's absence made me feel sadder than I would have thought.

Craig. He looked younger in the jean jacket than he did in the leather jacket, I didn't know why, he looked vulnerable. He yawned and I could see the teeth in the back of his mouth, the fillings. Let the music kind of float around me, trying not to think too much as I drank my spiked punch.

But I couldn't help thinking. It was what I always did. I couldn't take this constant watchfulness that I felt around Craig. This non-trustfulness. His mood swings, even when I saw him trying to control them. Maybe I had to admit that things weren't the same.

"Hey, Ash," he said, leaning into me, and I smiled up at him. He was being good tonight, relatively upbeat, and I could fall into his sexy looks over and over. That tousled hair, those troubled expressions, those pouting lips and his wide smile. I let him kiss me and I could feel the slight scratchiness of his cheek.

"Hey," I smiled, and hid all my doubts. It was just me, after all. He was better now. He was taking medication now. I saw him take it, twisting off the cap roughly, tapping them into his hand, that sort of pissed off expression, like he blamed the pills for his illness. Maybe they just represented it to him. And I'd watch him to make sure he did take them. Watching him, watching myself, I felt like more of a nurse than a girlfriend sometimes, more like a psychoanalyst than a girlfriend.

He wasn't supposed to drink, it mixed with his meds, and I could see that it upset him as he held the soda. I drank more, enough for both of us, enough to dull the sharp point of the worry I'd felt ever since he walked out of study hall. He'd snapped at Simpson and my jaw had dropped.

I hugged Paige when I walked by her, leaned into her and laughed. Drunk. Maybe I wasn't such a good match for someone as troubled as Craig. What could I do with all of that? His dead parents, his being abused, his mental illness. Whatever the future held. Maybe bad things. Maybe drugs and promiscuity and spending money and depression and mania and suicide. Maybe those things. I wasn't in the same league. My problems were shrunken little things in comparison.

Was he sober? I was too drunk to tell, but he sort of looked it. It was easy to hang onto him and kiss him and to feel that he could protect me for once, easy to do those things when I was drunk. Easy to let my worry go. He wasn't really my responsibility. Not really.

"Want to find someplace to go?" he said in my ear, and I nodded. Off to a secret place, a secret room with a lock and a bed, and I felt so slightly numb from the alcohol. So slightly removed from this, all of this.

We found a room without too much difficulty, and he slipped out of his jean jacket while I slipped out of my shoes. I licked my lips and watched him take a step toward me, watched his eyes and that look he gave me. Felt this drunken love for him, and this was the problem. I loved him but now I was afraid of what that love could bring.

"I love you, Ash," he said, my nickname, the way he said it, making me shiver. The feel of his hands as he touched my skin, the slight roughness of his fingertips from playing the guitar without a pick. Close enough to him to feel his breath against my cheek, to hear his heart beat.

Times like this, his movements, the way he knew what to do with this sex stuff when I was totally in the dark, times like this I didn't want to let him go. _Selfish_, I thought. I only wanted him when I was getting something out of it. But when I was worrying and watching what I said and watching what he said, then I was ready to let go.

"I love you, too," I said, thinking of that other party at my house for Paige, when I was going to sleep with him way before I was ready to because I didn't want to lose him. He was always pushing me to do these things that were beyond my comfort zone. I'd never been in a comfort zone with him. But excitement could only go so far before it drove you crazy. I couldn't live on the edge.

Afterward, feeling almost hurt but in a sort of good way, dressing again, watching him pull his jeans up over his hips. I wanted to tell him now, sever it all once and for all. 'Craig, I can't do this,' or 'Craig, it isn't because I don't love you,' There was no way to put it, and he stares at me like he knows what I'm thinking. I duck my head, pull on my shoes, kiss his cheek.

"How'd you learn how to do that?" I asked, and he smiled.

"It's just natural ability, I guess,"

Back into the party, Dylan and Marco making out in the corner, Marco on Dylan's lap. Jimmy, drunk now, twirling around in his chair, laughing. Paige dancing with her little sinewy movements, and did I see Alex somewhere in the background? Hazel refilling her cup of spiked punch, and despite the warning on his medicine labels about not drinking Craig dumped some vodka into his glass of soda.

I didn't care anymore. I wasn't babysitting him. If it made him drunk too fast or made him sick that was his problem to deal with. I knew he didn't have a mother, maybe he was looking for one in me. But I couldn't be that for him. Couldn't be anything for him. Was the room starting to spin? I hoped not. I really hoped not.


	3. Chapter 3

"Um, Ash, hon?" Paige had come up next to me quietly and tugged at my arm with a worried look in her eyes.

"Yeah?" I'd laid off the drinks and switched to water, hoping to stave off a hangover. I still felt my nice little buzz, but the look in Paige's eyes fizzled it a little.

"I think you should check on Craig," she said.

"Why?" My buzz fizzled a little more, like it was one of those sparkler sticks and someone was tossing droplets of water at it. And I wanted to scream. Check on Craig? What was I, his mother?

"Just…check on him,"

She pointed to the bathroom and I knocked on the door, heard a groan in response.

"Craig?" I said, pushing on the door. He was on the floor, kind of kneeling in front of the toilet. He'd thrown up already and I could see in his face that he was going to do it again.

"I'm fine, I'm just…sick," he said, turning away from me. I stood in the doorway, not sure what to do. I knew the meds he was on were serious, and that he really shouldn't have been drinking with them in his system.

"We should, maybe we should leave," I suggested, and then wondered how we'd manage that. He couldn't drive like this and neither could I. I was too drunk, too buzzed. So I thought we could call a cab, call Joey, call my mom, Toby's dad, or find someone here who was sober enough to drive us home.

"No, Ashley, just leave me alone," He made those retching noises and I backed up and left, and I heard the vomit splash into the bowl as I closed the door. I started to think about hospitals and ER's, because I knew how toxic the mixture of drugs and alcohol could be. But what if it wasn't quite so serious? He'd throw up and be fine, maybe? I held my head in my hands. This wasn't what I wanted. Worrying, babysitting, more and more having Craig as a boyfriend was becoming work.

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I sat on the couch, and my buzz was completely gone. Craig had been in that bathroom for hours, it felt like. It might be. I was still on the fence with what to do. Part of me wanted to drag him to an ER, and another part wanted to run.

I went to the door again and pushed it open. He was laying on the floor.

"Craig, get up," I said, and he didn't respond. I started to get scared, checked for breathing. I could see the slow rise and fall of his chest, and I could hear him breathing. He wasn't blue.

"Craig," I said, and took his hand, tried to pull him up. He pulled his hand away and opened his eyes, kind of rolled his eyes toward me. I could see how his clothes were wrinkled and stained.

"Look, I'll be fine, just…leave me alone," he said. He sat up, his back against the wall, head in his hands. I couldn't do this. I didn't know what it was he needed. Maybe he just needed to be left alone.

"Fine," I said to him, and I actually felt lighter as I turned away. I saw Dylan in a corner of the room, and he didn't look all that drunk. I headed over to him and asked him for a ride home. He shrugged, said sure.

"Ashley," Paige came running up to me as I pulled on my coat and followed Dylan through the room, the keys in his hand, "where are you going?"

"Home," I said.

"What about Craig?" Paige, her puzzled eyes, trying to pierce mine.

"I can't help him," I said.


End file.
